Outline of the February 23, Lecture / Y. Terzibasoglu

European Expansion in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans (15th – 17th centuries)

- The birth of the world economy

- Construction of markets: political and economic

- Conquest of the Americas by the Spanish and the Portuguese

- Local trading networks (regulated by Aztec and Mayan empires) replaced by the Atlantic trade (regulated by Spanish and Portuguese crowns)

- Differences between Spanish and Portuguese expansion

- Portuguese in Africa and the Indian Ocean in the 15th century: establishment of commercial bases and a trading network

- Spanish in America: establishment of an empire

- Demographic collapse and slavery, establishment of a plantation economy

- Emergence of new political and economic structures in Latin America

- Flow of silver: a mixed blessing for Europe

- Reasons for the decline of Spanish and Portuguese power

- The rise of the Dutch: domestic conditions in the Low Countries, the struggle between merchants and crafts guilds, and between town and countryside.